The Berlin Wall primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West though the official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep so-called Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state.
The head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens of the GDR could cross the border whenever they pleased until November 9,1989 till which the Berlin Wall stood up there.
Ecstatic crowds swarmed the wall that night. Some brought hammers and picks and began to chip away at the wall itself while others crossed freely into West Berlin. To this day, one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the Cold War remained to be the Berlin Wall itself.
The Partitioning of Berlin:
A pair of Allied peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam determined the fate of Germany’s territories after World War II came to an end in 1945.
The defeated nation were splitted into four “allied occupation zones”: The western part went to the United States, Great Britain and (eventually) France while the eastern part of the country went to the Soviet Union.
The Yalta and Potsdam agreements split the city into similar sectors even though Berlin was located entirely within the Soviet part of the country. The other Allies took the western while the Soviets took the eastern half. This four-way occupation of Berlin began in June 1945.
Blockade and Crisis:
The existence of West Berlin “stuck like a bone in the Soviet throat,” as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev put it as it was a conspicuously capitalist city deep within communist East Germany.
The United States, Britain and France were driven out of the city for good by the Russians maneuver. In 1948, the western Allies were forced out of the city by a Soviet blockade of West Berlin. However, the United States and its allies supplied their sectors of the city from the air instead of retreating.
This effort lasted for more than a year and delivered more than 2.3 million tons of food, fuel and other goods to West Berlin which was known as the Berlin Airlift. The Soviets called off the blockade in 1949. Tensions flared again in 1958 after a decade of relative calm.
For the next three years, the Soviets blustered and made threats, while the Allies resisted as the Soviets emboldened by the successful launch of the Sputnik satellite the year before during the “Space Race” and embarrassed by the seemingly endless flow of refugees from east to west.
The flood of refugees continued in the meantime. Some 19,000 people left the GDR through Berlin in June 1961. 30,000 fled in the following month.
16,000 East Germans crossed the border into West Berlin in the first 11 days of August, and 2,400 followed on August 12 some—the largest number of defectors ever to leave East Germany in a single day.
Building the Wall:
That night to stop the flow of emigrants by closing its border for good was permissioned by Premier Khrushchev to the East German government.
The East German army, police force and volunteer construction workers had completed a makeshift barbed wire and concrete block wall that divided one side of the city from the other in just two weeks which later became known as the Berlin Wall.
Berliners on both sides of the city could move around fairly freely before the wall was built: They were used to cross the East-West border in order to work, to shop or even to go to the theater and the movies. Passengers were carried back and forth by the train and subway lines.
It became impossible to get from East to West Berlin except through one of three checkpoints after the wall was built: at Helmstedt (“Checkpoint Alpha” in American military parlance), at Dreilinden (“Checkpoint Bravo”) an the center of Berlin at Friedrichstrasse (“Checkpoint Charlie”).
East German soldiers screened diplomats and other officials before they were allowed to enter or leave at each of the checkpoints. Travelers from East and West Berlin were rarely allowed across the border except under special circumstances.
The Berlin Wall During 1961-1989:
The construction of the Berlin Wall did defuse the crisis over Berlin and also stopped the flood of refugees from East to West.
John F. Kennedy delivered one of the most famous addresses of his presidency almost two years after the Berlin Wall was erected, to a crowd of more than 120,000 who gathered outside West Berlin’s city hall, just steps from the Brandenburg Gate.
“I am a Berliner” was one particular phrase which was largely remembered in Kennedy's speech.
In all, while trying to get over, under or around the Berlin Wall at least 171 people were killed. Escape from East Germany was not impossible, however: More than 5,000 East Germans (including some 600 border guards) managed to cross the border by jumping out of windows adjacent to the wall.
Even some tried climbing over the barbed wire, flying in hot air balloons, crawling through the sewers and driving through unfortified parts of the wall at high speeds from 1961 until the wall came down in 1989.
The Fall of the Wall:
The spokesman for East Berlin’s Communist Party announced a change in his city’s relations with the West as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe on November 9,1989.
He announced that citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country’s borders starting at midnight that day. East and West Berliners flocked to the wall chanting “Tor auf!” (“Open the gate!”) while drinking beer and champagne. At midnight the checkpoints got flooded by them.
That weekend to participate in a celebration more than 2 million people from East Berlin visited West Berlin. One of the journalist wrote, “the greatest street party in the history of the world.
” People who used to be known as “mauerspechte,” or “wall woodpeckers” used hammers and picks to knock away chunks of the wall while cranes and bulldozers pulled down section after section. Soon the wall was gone and for the first time since 1945 Berlin was united.
On October 3, 1990, almost one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall the reunification of East and West Germany was made official.
Written by: Gourav Chowdhury
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